October 13: Future Time, Cold Sweats, Full Life

"You know nothing of future time," pronounced Deep Thought, "and yet in my teeming circuitry I can navigate the infinite delta streams of future probability and see that there must one day come a computer whose merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate, but which it will be my fate eventually to design."

The future is something that I worry about.  A lot.  You may even say that I have been preoccupied with the future since I was a small child.  One of my recurring nightmares as a young person involved being in a van without a driver,  travelling down a long, unending road by myself.  No idea where I'm heading.  Just toward some distant, unknown destination.  I would wake up in cold sweats from this dream.

As an adult, this anxiety over the future hasn't subsided.  I still spend a great deal of time stressing over what tomorrow may bring.  You're probably thinking about now, "What's the point in worrying about the future?"  I agree with you.  Losing sleep over what MAY happen is a losing venture.  It doesn't make the future better or worse.  It simply makes me really tired.

I think it's a matter of control for me.  I like my days ordered and calm.  In the morning, when I wake up, I already have my itinerary planned out.  I make my "to do" list for the next day right before I go to bed.  I know what I will be doing, hour by hour.  That comforts me.  Leaves little room for disaster or surprise or accident.  Of course, it also leaves little room for unexpected joys, those happy moments when life takes a turn for the better instead of the worse.

I know that the future is beyond my control.  I know that the present is what I should be focusing on.  You don't have to remind me of this fact.  I have control over my actions and reactions today.  That's it.  I can prepare for a good tomorrow, but that doesn't guarantee that it will happen.  It doesn't even guarantee that I will have a good afternoon or evening. 

Here is what I know about today:  we are celebrating my birthday at my mother's house.  My sister is making prime rib, mashed potatoes, and tapioca pudding, three traditional Saint Marty's Day dishes.  In addition, people will sing "Happy Birthday" to me.  I may receive a gift or two.  Maybe not.  And tonight, if everything goes according to plan, my son will practice his trombone, and my daughter will focus on her homework.  Me?  I'll spend my last few hours before bedtime getting ready for tomorrow and the coming week.  Because I like the illusion of preparedness.

And tomorrow, I will celebrate my twenty-fourth wedding anniversary with my wife.  We will go out to our favorite little Italian restaurant for dinner.  Have some drinks.  Eat some good food.  Think about how our life together began.  Talk about the hopes and dreams we had.  Imagine what we would now tell those two young people who said "I do" almost a quarter century ago, when everything seemed possible.

The future still frightens me, because everything, at the moment, seems unsettled.  In the past 24 years, my life has been full of surprises, good and bad.  I've struggled, and I've rejoiced.  I've cried a lot, and I've laughed a lot.  And I've had a beautiful partner who's accompanied me on this long, winding road into the future. 

Saint Marty thinks that's pretty good definition of a full life.

October 12: Bottom Fell Out, Big Bang, Sunlight then Snowlight

He [Ford] tossed over The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and then curled himself up into a fetal ball to prepare himself for the jump.

At that moment the bottom fell out of Arthur's mind.

Arthur experiences the jump to hyperspace for the first time in his life, and it is not a pleasant.  Everything sort of collapses and expands at the same time.  I understand this feeling--that unstable moment when the reality that you know gets pulled out from underneath your feet like a loose rug, and you end up on your back, on the floor, staring up at a ceiling that you've never really taken the opportunity to study.  You notice cracks and cobwebs and shadows that have probably been there for quite some time.  A new perspective on an old place.

I've had this happen to me quite a lot.  In fact, my life has been a series of jumps to hyperspace, my universe shifting in a big bang fraction of a second.  And after this happens, it takes some time for the planets and stars to realign themselves into new orbits and trajectories.  Currently, I am in a settling phase, trying to adjust to my new reality, version 25.1.

For a person who has a pathological dislike of change in any form, I have become very used to these cosmological adjustments.  In fact, I would venture to say that they have become almost normal for me.  However, I really crave a life where the status quo has a foundation that isn't quicksand.  I want ten years or so where my biggest worry is what book to read next, with the occasional automobile repair thrown in.

I'm at McDonald's currently, listening to a group of old codgers who meet up here every morning.  They sit around the same table every day, talking about politics and news and sports.  Most of them are Trump supporters who are quite vocal in their dislike of anything that even smacks of social equity and justice.  They're Korean War vets and Vietnam vets.  They've worked hard all their lives, most of them married to the same people for 40 or 50 or 60 years.  All of them are retired.  They've had stability for quite some time.  Or so I imagine.

I don't envy everything about these guys.  Certainly not their social and political alignments.  But there's something about the routine of their days that really appeals to me.  The comfort they possess of money and relationship and world view.  Now, I'm sure that they all have problems in their lives.  Health issues.  Family issues.  Maybe even some money issues.  But, they seem to enjoy a stability in their lives that I haven't known since I started college.

Maybe, however, there are people out there who look at me and see someone who's stable and happy.  Who enjoys a life of calm routine.  In fact, there may be a person sitting here in McDonald's right now who is staring at me, thinking, "If only I had a life like his, I would be so happy."  I've quoted Thoreau recently in another post:  "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."  I think that is probably true of everybody here this morning, eating pancakes and Egg McMuffins, drinking coffee and Diet Coke.

The first snow of the season fell in my home town this morning.  Infrequent, spitting cold flakes.  The world is all autumn yellow and orange and red.  It is a shifting kind of day, in between the fire of harvest and the cold sleep of December.  Even this little rock of a planet we live on must endure these hyperspace jumps of change, every year.  A week ago, the air was warm, almost summery.  Today, I can taste winter.

It's the way things are.  Big bang then quiet eons.  Summer then autumn then winter.  Sunlight then snowlight.  Love and then sorrow.

Saint Marty will just go on, leading his life of quiet desperation.

October 10-11: No Significance, Sleepless Nights, Nobel Prize for Literature

In order that some sense of mystery should still be preserved, no revelation will yet be made concerning whose upper arm sustains the bruise.  This fact may safely be made the subject of suspense since it is of no significance whatsoever.

There will be no suspense in this blog post.  And most of what I write will have little to no literary significance whatsoever.  I have had a week of mostly sleepless nights, due to projects and work I needed to complete.  I am beat.

I apologize for my absence last night.  My excuse is simple:  poetry.  I was leading my monthly workshop at the Joy Center in my home town.  The theme was fears and phobias, and I had a great evening of poeting with a group of talented writers and friends.  These workshops have become one of my favorite monthly events.  Yesterday, I got home from the workshop at around 11 p.m., with every intention of typing a quick post before I went to bed.  Didn't happen, obviously.

And I have a feeling that, when I get home tonight, I will probably not have a whole lot of energy.  I'm feeling a little exhausted already.  As soon I eat dinner, I have a date with my pillow and blankie.  (Yes, I said "blankie."  Don't judge me.)  My body makes me do this every once in a while.  I think of it as a reboot, where I have to reset in order to continue to function properly.

Before I call it a night, however, I must make mention of the fact that, once again, the Swedish Academy has overlooked me for the Nobel Prize in Literature.  In fact (since no literature Nobel was awarded last year because of a sex scandal within the Swedish Academy), I had double the chances of winning this year--winners were announced for the years 2018 and 2019. 

Again, there is no suspense here.  I waited for the call this morning from the Swedish Academy's new Permanent Secretary, Mats Malm.  I had my cell phone at the ready at 6 a.m.  I waited . . . and waited . . . and waited.  Eventually, Mats walked through the white doors into the main hall of the Swedish Academy and announced that the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature for 2018 was the Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk and the winner of the Nobel for 2019 was Austrian writer Peter Handke.  Once again, my literary accomplishments went unrewarded.

Almost immediately after the announcement, I received my annual text from one of my best friends.  It simply read:  "Dammit!  The Nobel Academy is blind.  I am so tired of you getting robbed!"

Never fear.  One of these years, the doors to the great hall will swing open, and the Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy will enter.  The reporters' cameras will go machine gun crazy taking pictures.  The Secretary will clear his throat and announce:  "The Nobel Prize in Literature for the year [fill in the blank] is awarded to the American author Saint Marty for a body of work that crosses the boundaries of intellect and emotion, mapping the continents of experience with a depth of dark wit and wisdom, giving voice to the voiceless immigrants of the human condition."  Or something like that.

Until that time, Saint Marty will sleep peacefully tonight, knowing that, some December in the future, his trip to Sweden is coming . . .

October 9: Hell of a Quote, Hi, Earth-Shattering, Poetry

The way I've been composing my Hitchhiker's posts since we finished the book last week is fairly simple.  I take the book in one hand and begin flipping through the pages, without looking.  Then, at some point, when the impulse hits me, I stab my finger at a particular page and paragraph, again without looking.  Surprisingly, my finger usually lands on a passage that speaks to me in some way.  This is what my finger found this evening:

"Hi," he said to a small knot of creatures from the press who were standing nearby wishing that he would stop saying Hi and get on with the quotes.  He grinned at them particularly because he knew that in a few moments he would be giving them one hell of a quote.

Of course, this is about Zaphod Beeblebrox, President of the Imperial Galactic Government, just before he is about to steal the Heart of Gold spaceship with his girlfriend, Trillian.  Nobody else knows what is about to happen.  The press is there to report on the unveiling of the Heart of Gold, nothing more.  The entire universe is about to be surprised.

I think most of my days are like this.  I show up to work or teaching, planner in hand, book/laptop bag on my shoulder, thinking that it's going to be like any other day.  I say "hi" to people, make jokes, go about the business of my life.  I don't expect anything earth-shattering to happen.  I save the earth-shattering stuff for when I sit down to write.  At least, I try to.

You see, I'm of the opinion that anything can be earth-shattering.  For instance, I'm pretty hungry right now.  I'm eating a piece of leftover pizza for dinner.  On another day, in different circumstances, I wouldn't really be paying too much attention to this slice.  However, because of my empty stomach, and because I just worked eight hours and then taught for another two and am getting ready to teach for another three-and-a-half hours, eating this triangle of pizza is turning into a pretty earth-shattering experience for me.

For me, that's what poetry is all about.  Finding the earth-shattering in the everyday things in life.  Like pizza.  Or a drink of water.  Or a stick of pepperoni.  Or a discarded Band-aid.  Whatever.  The best poems--the ones I love the most--are about these kinds of mundane experiences, when the poet is suddenly contemplating string theory while tying her shoes.  That is the kind of poetry that unhinges my head from my shoulders.

Two days ago, I wrote what I think is the finished draft of a poem.  It had been sitting on a page in my journal, collecting dust, since August.  I didn't think it was very good, so I sort of abandoned it.  For some reason, I felt myself drawn back to it on Monday.  I reread it and saw something breathing on the page.  So I decided to shape it, give it life.

It's a poem about my son.  And it's about authenticity.  And joy.  And time.  And seeing something earth-shattering.  At least, that's what I think it's about.  Sometimes, writers are the worst people for understanding what they've written.  Because most of what writers do is instinctual.  I let my mind go where it needs to go, create whatever beautiful mess it needs to create.  If it ends up being a poem, all the better.

I've decided to include it below, let you be the judge.  Is it a poem or just a beautiful mess?  A piece of pizza or the meaning of life?  Both?  Neither?

Take a bite of this poem, and tell Saint Marty if it changes you in any way.

Harvest Time

by:  Martin Achatz

He begged me for just ten more minutes

before he had to shower, wash off

the math and lunchroom and homework

of the day.  He stands in the backyard

by the woodpile, holds a stick

the size of his arm, swinging

it through the dusk.  Wild chops

that guillotine the swarm of mosquitoes

in front of his face.  Then he turns, swings

in the other direction, towards the neighbor’s

house.  The arc bisects the navel orange

sun.  Back and forth he threshes the air,

the way I saw a Russian peasant boy

in an old newsreel slash down wheat

with a scythe.  All the time my son

does this, his mouth moves.  He’s talking

or shouting or singing.  I can’t hear

him through the kitchen window.

But he’s smiling a smile that is all him.

A smile he saves just for himself.

I’ve never seen it before.  It’s not meant

for my eyes or anyone’s eyes.  I turn

away from the glass.  Let him be

his own, harvesting these last

golden bushels of daylight.